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I have been accepted into a Beta Testing Program, and will soon be installing a New unreleased 2TB SSHD, and Upgrading my Windows 7 64-Bit to Windows 8 PRO 64-Bit.Presently I have a RAID 0+1, using 3-Samsung F3 Spinpoint HD103SJ @ 1TB each.I do Mild MMORPG Gaming (Lotro, WoW, & D3), I Burn CD's, & Videos, and General Web Surfing (Facebook, Forums, Twitter, Streaming Video, etc.,)Wanted to find out which Hard-drive is going to be Best for which Software, and/or Should I Re-Format my RAID back to 3 separate Hard-Drives, or Leave the RAID as is?Perhaps Load everything into the SSHD? Perhaps Uninstall the RAID configuration, and Use 1 of the Spinpoints for Back-up (and Box up the other 2)??Wanted to see what would be the Best Over-all recommendation(s) for this.

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With this unknown unreleased 2TB SSD drive i can't exactly guarantee that it might be faster then your current RAID setup. You could just install it as a secondary drive and run some benchmarks and tests on the drive itself to see how fast it is.

You could try dual booting windows 7 and 8 and keep your current config, try the new drive with its own OS to compare. I know it would also be comparing windows 7 to 8, but they both have about the same performance as far as gaming in my opinion.

With this unknown unreleased 2TB SSD drive i can't exactly guarantee that it might be faster then your current RAID setup. You could just install it as a secondary drive and run some benchmarks and tests on the drive itself to see how fast it is.

So, which Benchmark Testing Programs would you recommend? Links?Since, I have my system Listed, do You see a need to speed-up my RAM? (I have been offered a "Deal" from G.Skill to go to 4x4GB 1866)

RAID 0 is something that should be avoided unless you have traditional drives AND you are aiming for speed. If you only occasionally access files on the standard drive, a non-RAID setup would be the way to go. Games are often loaded into system memory at launch, so you don't really need RAID 0 for speed in this application unless you don't like waiting a few seconds, or find the cost of an SSD too high.

Most home users typically aim for redundancy, other RAID types or the Storage Spaces setup in Windows 8 might be more beneficial in this case, especially when paired with an online backup solution like Crashplan.

As for the RAM, are you willing to overclock the RAM to get those speeds? AMD uses DDR3-1333 as standard and you may have to tweak around in the BIOS to get it to these overclocked speeds. You will probably not get much benefit out of overclocking RAM from 1333 speeds to 1866.

Synthetic benchmarks are relatively useless, real world performance is what matters. Benchmarking software can often help "burn in" your hardware. For this, I would go with Furmark for the GPU, and Prime95 for the RAM/CPU.

RAID 0 is something that should be avoided unless you have traditional drives AND you are aiming for speed. If you only occasionally access files on the standard drive, a non-RAID setup would be the way to go. Games are often loaded into system memory at launch, so you don't really need RAID 0 for speed in this application unless you don't like waiting a few seconds, or find the cost of an SSD too high.

Most home users typically aim for redundancy, other RAID types or the Storage Spaces setup in Windows 8 might be more beneficial in this case, especially when paired with an online backup solution like Crashplan.

As for the RAM, are you willing to overclock the RAM to get those speeds? AMD uses DDR3-1333 as standard and you may have to tweak around in the BIOS to get it to these overclocked speeds. You will probably not get much benefit out of overclocking RAM from 1333 speeds to 1866.

Synthetic benchmarks are relatively useless, real world performance is what matters. Benchmarking software can often help "burn in" your hardware. For this, I would go with Furmark for the GPU, and Prime95 for the RAM/CPU.

Well, I was hoping that you would have a suggestion on the Most important part of my Initial Post, as To what I should do with this Monster 2TB SSHD (Beta) I'm going to be Testing??Do You think I should go ahead and Load the Windows 8 Pro 64-Bit OS onto this new SSHD (and everything else for that matter), and just dump the RAID and those Old Style HDD's?

Unreleased and Beta? I think I would keep my current setup as a just in case. You seem like you wanted speed and safety with your current setup. Beta mens it could go bad at anytime or have some show stopping defect surface under real world conditions.

Any drive can die, be it a SSD, A traditional drive or a hybrid drive.

As for Windows 8, Do You have a touchscreen? If you aren't going to use the touchscreen functionality, why switch from Windows 7.

Good Luck
Roger

Edited by rotor123, 26 December 2012 - 03:57 PM.

Fortune Cookie says: Fortune not Found: Abort, Retry, Ignore?

Sent from my All-In-One Desktop. Perfect for Internet, Not for heavy usage or gaming however.

Unreleased and Beta? I think I would keep my current setup as a just in case. You seem like you wanted speed and safety with your current setup. Beta mens it could go bad at anytime or have some show stopping defect surface under real world conditions.

Any drive can die, be it a SSD, A traditional drive or a hybrid drive.

As for Windows 8, Do You have a touchscreen? If you aren't going to use the touchscreen functionality, why switch from Windows 7.

Good LuckRoger

Nope, No Touch Screen...,But One of the Requirements for this Beta Test was to have Windows 8 64-Bit (which they supplied), and they supplied a Flash Drive that has all their Required Software for testing Loaded into it....Since I have never done Hardware Testing before, I found it Kinda Cool that they even Had My Name, and my "Profile" Printed on the Sealed Wrapper that the SSHD is in Perhaps, I'll just Leave my Present Setup with Windows 7 (Just in Case), and Put the Windows 8 on the SSHD as per their Instructions (Dual Boot)

Windows 8 is not bad on non-touch devices. I barely use the Start Screen and there are some under-the-hood improvements which makes it compelling. Since you are beta testing a storage device, I would keep my original setup going just in case and only using the beta drive for stuff I'm willing to lose.